Cognitively Dissonant

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Thursday, July 11, 2013

Doug Giles at Clash Daily does a great job of pointing out what an utterly corrupt judge is presiding over the Zimmerman trial. Click on the title for the whole article. Here is a sample:

A gruff and angry Nelson actually walked right out of the courtroom
despite the ongoing, beseeching protests of West and O’Mara after
keeping them there long into the night until 10pm on Tuesday, declaring
loudly again and again that her court was adjourned and berating them
for daring to object to what they saw as the unreasonableness of her
rulings and timetables. Veteran legal observers and pundits expressed
astonishment.

Fortunately for West and company, after what climaxed in the almost
the explosive confrontation in open court between he and Nelson today,
he finally got Nelson to acknowledge that the prosecution had taken
things a step too far. After she reluctantly allowed a brief recess in
which applicable case law was frantically researched and brought forth
by the defense, she eventually reviewed their rebuttal to the
prosecution’s ploy, and somberly ruled that West was right–that the 3rd
degree felony murder charge was not legitimate for consideration by the
jury.

I have been watching as much of the trial as possible, and it has been painful watching how desperate the prosecution and the judge are to convict Zimmerman of whatever they can make stick. Tomorrow should be interesting. The defense presents their closing arguments at 8:30 a.m. See you there....
---Katie

Monday, July 08, 2013

My daughter Ashley, who just had her first baby, posted the following article on Facebook and thanked me for modelling this style of motherhood for her. I hope I did, and I am very touched. Thank you, Ashley, your mom needed to hear these words today!

a mom with a dream

Dear One,

When
you announce your entrance into this crazy dance called motherhood,
there is going to be cheering and laughter. There will be parties! With
presents! And hugs, and tears, and crying and congratulations. Then,
there will be questions, so many questions. What are you having? Do you
have a name? Are you planning a natural birth? Have you considered
birthing in water? Are you going to breastfeed? (Get ready for it
darling, perfect strangers will ask you about your breasts in the middle
of the cereal aisle.) Is it an international adoption? What country are
you going through? Can you accurately express for me your views on
adoption ethics in three minutes or less?

Beware the questions
that are only asked as an opening to an opinion you do not want. The
follow up opinions will be frequent. You can’t name your baby that. You
really should consider natural birth. You will ask for the epidural when
the labor starts! Breast is best! My kids were raised on formula and
they are fine!

People will have opinions about sleeping and eating
and baby carriers and strollers. There will be endless debates about
breasts and bottles, epidurals and water births, the merits of open
adoption. I don’t have any advice about any of that. I only have my
story. I know what worked for me and you will learn what works for you.
Listen closely, you have the answers inside. You are, after all, the mom
God picked out special just for that perfect babe of yours. And lovely
new mom, there is grace, oh so much grace in the motherhood dance, there
is permission to get it wrong.

But there is one thing they will
tell you that I am sure is wrong. There is one piece of advice that I
will hand out freely and earnestly to anyone who will let me put it into
their hands. Bring your whole self to motherhood, even the creative pieces, even the messy parts covered in paint and ink, soaked in un-attained dreams. Your baby needs their momma to dream.

Some
will tell you to fold up your creativity, to tuck it away safely into a
box labeled “maybe when the kids are bigger” and hope for the best in
ten plus years. There are those who tell you that this time filled with
onesies and blankets, binkies and bottles is the time when the creative
piece of yourself will need to go dormant. There simply is not time.

Don’t
listen to that garbage. I may not know whether or not you should work,
but I am sure your child needs their whole mother. All of her. If you
are a painter, paint, if you are a writer write, if you are a culinary
genius bake it out (and send me a care package, I’ll leave you my
address.) Your babies need all of you, even the creative part,
especially the creative parts, the parts that make you feel alive and
whole and hopeful. Your babies need their momma to be all of those
things. They need to see you being your whole entire self. It gives them
permission to be their whole-selves too.